Mirror Mirror film review

ALICE In Wonderland has a lot to answer for. The success of the Tim Burton-directed Lewis Carroll adaptation (over $1 billion at the global box office) has prompted a Hollywood stampede for fairytales.

Last year we had a dud Red Riding Hood from Twilight director Catherine Hardwick and upcoming projects include a Jack And The Beanstalk and a new Peter Pan.

Most attention, however, has focused on rival Snow White projects (damn that girl is hot!) Mirror Mirror and Snow White And The Hunstman.

The former stars Julia Roberts as the evil Queen and Lily Collins in the title role while the latter boasts Charlize Theron opposite Twilight star Kristen Stewart.

Which will be the fairest of them all the box office? Mirror Mirror has the advantage of being out first and adopts the spoofy, lighthearted approach of Burton’s Alice In Wonderland while Snow White And The Huntsman by all accounts offers a more edgy and muscular interpretation of the fairytale (it’s Snow White as Joan Of Arc).

The novelty of Mirror Mirror is that it’s told from the queen’s perspective as she pours out her loathing of Snow White and confesses her fear of losing her status as the kingdom’s most beautiful.

“Snow would have to do what snow does best, Snow would have to fall” she tell us in an opening monologue, plotting her rival’s demise from the royal palace where she presides Marie Antoinette-like over a demoralized and destitute nation.

Roberts takes to the part with relish, clearly enjoying playing a vain, bitter and rapacious old witch who doesn’t bat an eyelid about taxing the local peasants into starvation to fund her extravagent lifestyle.

You do feel she deserved better lines, however. “There’s something about you that’s so incredibly irritating” she tells Snow White. “I hate your hair.” It’s not the most crushing of put-downs. Where’s Alan Rickman’s Sheriff of Nottingham when you need him to cancel Christmas?

As a result of the ho-hum script, her power-playing with Snow White rarely crackles with the tension it should, the emphasis more on silly laughs.

Much of the humour is provided by a game Armie Hammer (the Winklevoss twins in The Social Network) who plays a goofy prince robbed and stripped to the waist by the seven dwarfs during a stroll in the forest; the dwarfs here – played by diminutive actors - are thieving bandits resentful of a society that has rejected them.

The Queen plots to marry him and thus solve her financial problems but he only has eyes for the demure Snow White who the Queen believes is dead.

A love potion that makes him yap and froth like a puppy is but one indignity thrust upon the prince that Hammer takes in his stride and it’s all amiable enough, enhanced by Collins’s fetching and sympathetic Snow White.

The fairytale kingdom looks impressive with its snowy landscapes and lavish palace interiors and there is some good swordplay, including a climactic showdown with a wolf-like beast.

It’s inconsequential, campy fun but a sharper and funnier script would have made it more memorable and entertaining. The seven dwarfs in particular are short-changed, so to speak, in the script department, lacking much definition or cuteness.

A belated appearance by Sean Bean, however, adds a welcome note of gravitas and emotion at the climax.